Buffalo Bayou Park sits in the basin of Buffalo Bayou just west of downtown.After rushing through the narrow choke point at Shepherd Drive, the Harvey floodwatersspread out a bit before they passed through downtown on the way to the ship channel and Trinity Bay, dumping tons of silt, plastic debris, and broken trees throughout the park.

Photos from Aaron Cohen here:http://nbc4i.com/2017/08/28/before-and-after-photos-illustrate-massive-houston-flooding/show a view looking west over the flood.

It was a LOT of water. The record for 3-day precipitation at major U.S. cities now looks like this:

For a more complete view of the park, visit the Buffalo Bayou Partnership website:

"Stretching from Shepherd Drive to Sabine Street between Allen Parkway and Memorial Drive, the 160-acre Buffalo Bayou Park is one of the country’s great urban green spaces."http://buffalobayou.org/visit/destination/buffalo-bayou-park/

Rescission of the June 15, 2012 Memorandum Entitled “Exercising Prosecutorial Discretion with Respect to Individuals Who Came to the United States as Children”

This memorandum rescinds the June 15, 2012 memorandum entitled “Exercising Prosecutorial Discretion with Respect to Individuals Who Came to the United States as Children,” which established the program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (“DACA”). For the reasons and in the manner outlined below, Department of Homeland Security personnel shall take all appropriate actions to execute a wind-down of the program, consistent with the parameters established in this memorandum.Background

The Department of Homeland Security established DACA through the issuance of a memorandum on June 15, 2012. The program purported to use deferred action—an act of prosecutorial discretion meant to be applied only on an individualized case-by-case basis—to confer certain benefits to illegal aliens that Congress had not otherwise acted to provide by law.[1] Specifically, DACA provided certain illegal aliens who entered the United States before the age of sixteen a period of deferred action and eligibility to request employment authorization.

On November 20, 2014, the Department issued a new memorandum, expanding the parameters of DACA and creating a new policy called Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (“DAPA”). Among other things—such as the expansion of the coverage criteria under the 2012 DACA policy to encompass aliens with a wider range of ages and arrival dates, and lengthening the period of deferred action and work authorization from two years to three—the November 20, 2014 memorandum directed USCIS “to establish a process, similar to DACA, for exercising prosecutorial discretion through the use of deferred action, on a case-by-case basis,” to certain aliens who have “a son or daughter who is a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident.”

Prior to the implementation of DAPA, twenty-six states—led by Texas—challenged the policies announced in the November 20, 2014 memorandum in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. In an order issued on February 16, 2015, the district court preliminarily enjoined the policies nationwide.[2] The district court held that the plaintiff states were likely to succeed on their claim that the DAPA program did not comply with relevant authorities.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed, holding that Texas and the other states had demonstrated a substantial likelihood of success on the merits and satisfied the other requirements for a preliminary injunction.[3] The Fifth Circuit concluded that the Department’s DAPA policy conflicted with the discretion authorized by Congress. In considering the DAPA program, the court noted that the Immigration and Nationality Act “flatly does not permit the reclassification of millions of illegal aliens as lawfully present and thereby make them newly eligible for a host of federal and state benefits, including work authorization.” According to the court, “DAPA is foreclosed by Congress’s careful plan; the program is ‘manifestly contrary to the statute’ and therefore was properly enjoined.”

Although the original DACA policy was not challenged in the lawsuit, both the district and appellate court decisions relied on factual findings about the implementation of the 2012 DACA memorandum. The Fifth Circuit agreed with the lower court that DACA decisions were not truly discretionary,[4] and that DAPA and expanded DACA would be substantially similar in execution. Both the district court and the Fifth Circuit concluded that implementation of the program did not comply with the Administrative Procedure Act because the Department did not implement it through notice-and-comment rulemaking.

The Supreme Court affirmed the Fifth Circuit’s ruling by equally divided vote (4-4).[5] The evenly divided ruling resulted in the Fifth Circuit order being affirmed. The preliminary injunction therefore remains in place today. In October 2016, the Supreme Court denied a request from DHS to rehear the case upon the appointment of a new Justice. After the 2016 election, both parties agreed to a stay in litigation to allow the new administration to review these issues.

On January 25, 2017, President Trump issued Executive Order No. 13,768, “Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States.” In that Order, the President directed federal agencies to “[e]nsure the faithful execution of the immigration laws . . . against all removable aliens,” and established new immigration enforcement priorities. On February 20, 2017, then Secretary of Homeland Security John F. Kelly issued an implementing memorandum, stating “the Department no longer will exempt classes or categories of removable aliens from potential enforcement,” except as provided in the Department’s June 15, 2012 memorandum establishing DACA,[6] and the November 20, 2014 memorandum establishing DAPA and expanding DACA.[7]

On June 15, 2017, after consulting with the Attorney General, and considering the likelihood of success on the merits of the ongoing litigation, then Secretary John F. Kelly issued a memorandum rescinding DAPA and the expansion of DACA—but temporarily left in place the June 15, 2012 memorandum that initially created the DACA program.

Then, on June 29, 2017, Texas, along with several other states, sent a letter to Attorney General Sessions asserting that the original 2012 DACA memorandum is unlawful for the same reasons stated in the Fifth Circuit and district court opinions regarding DAPA and expanded DACA. The letter notes that if DHS does not rescind the DACA memo by September 5, 2017, the States will seek to amend the DAPA lawsuit to include a challenge to DACA.

The Attorney General sent a letter to the Department on September 4, 2017, articulating his legal determination that DACA “was effectuated by the previous administration through executive action, without proper statutory authority and with no established end-date, after Congress' repeated rejection of proposed legislation that would have accomplished a similar result. Such an open-ended circumvention of immigration laws was an unconstitutional exercise of authority by the Executive Branch.” The letter further stated that because DACA “has the same legal and constitutional defects that the courts recognized as to DAPA, it is likely that potentially imminent litigation would yield similar results with respect to DACA.” Nevertheless, in light of the administrative complexities associated with ending the program, he recommended that the Department wind it down in an efficient and orderly fashion, and his office has reviewed the terms on which our Department will do so.Rescission of the June 15, 2012 DACA Memorandum

Taking into consideration the Supreme Court’s and the Fifth Circuit’s rulings in the ongoing litigation, and the September 4, 2017 letter from the Attorney General, it is clear that the June 15, 2012 DACA program should be terminated. In the exercise of my authority in establishing national immigration policies and priorities, except for the purposes explicitly identified below, I hereby rescind the June 15, 2012 memorandum.

Recognizing the complexities associated with winding down the program, the Department will provide a limited window in which it will adjudicate certain requests for DACA and associated applications meeting certain parameters specified below. Accordingly, effective immediately, the Department:

Will adjudicate—on an individual, case-by-case basis—properly filed pending DACA initial requests and associated applications for Employment Authorization Documents that have been accepted by the Department as of the date of this memorandum. Will reject all DACA initial requests and associated applications for Employment Authorization Documents filed after the date of this memorandum. Will adjudicate—on an individual, case by case basis—properly filed pending DACA renewal requests and associated applications for Employment Authorization Documents from current beneficiaries that have been accepted by the Department as of the date of this memorandum, and from current beneficiaries whose benefits will expire between the date of this memorandum and March 5, 2018 that have been accepted by the Department as of October 5, 2017. Will reject all DACA renewal requests and associated applications for Employment Authorization Documents filed outside of the parameters specified above. Will not terminate the grants of previously issued deferred action or revoke Employment Authorization Documents solely based on the directives in this memorandum for the remaining duration of their validity periods. Will not approve any new Form I-131 applications for advance parole under standards associated with the DACA program, although it will generally honor the stated validity period for previously approved applications for advance parole. Notwithstanding the continued validity of advance parole approvals previously granted, CBP will—of course—retain the authority it has always had and exercised in determining the admissibility of any person presenting at the border and the eligibility of such persons for parole. Further, USCIS will—of course—retain the authority to revoke or terminate an advance parole document at any time. Will administratively close all pending Form I-131 applications for advance parole filed under standards associated with the DACA program, and will refund all associated fees. Will continue to exercise its discretionary authority to terminate or deny deferred action at any time when immigration officials determine termination or denial of deferred action is appropriate.

This document is not intended to, does not, and may not be relied upon to create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law by any party in any administrative, civil, or criminal matter. Likewise, no limitations are placed by this guidance on the otherwise lawful enforcement or litigation prerogatives of DHS.

[1] Significantly, while the DACA denial notice indicates the decision to deny is made in the unreviewable discretion of USCIS, USCIS has not been able to identify specific denial cases where an applicant appeared to satisfy the programmatic categorical criteria as outlined in the June 15, 2012 memorandum, but still had his or her application denied based solely upon discretion.

[2] Texas v. United States, 86 F. Supp. 3d 591 (S.D. Tex. 2015).

[3] Texas v. United States, 809 F.3d 134 (5th Cir. 2015).

[4] Id.

[5] United States v. Texas, 136 S. Ct. 2271 (2016) (per curiam).

[6] Memorandum from Janet Napolitano, Secretary, DHS to David Aguilar, Acting Comm’r, CBP, et al., “Exercising Prosecutorial Discretion with Respect to Individuals Who Came to the United States as Children” (June 15, 2012).

[7] Memorandum from Jeh Johnson, Secretary, DHS, to Leon Rodriguez, Dir., USCIS, et al., “Exercising Prosecutorial Discretion with Respect to Individuals Who Came to the United States as Children and with Respect to Certain Individuals Whose Parents are U.S. Citizens or Permanent Residents” (Nov. 20, 2014).Topics: Border Security,Deferred ActionKeywords: DACA,Deferred Action for Childhood ArrivalsLast Published Date: September 5, 2017

It seems the Trump cabal wants to blind our intelligence services and force them to produce only acceptable information. This is crazy.

By JAMES RISEN and MATTHEW ROSENBERGFEB. 15, 2017

"...Bringing Mr. Feinberg into the administration to conduct the review is seen as a way of injecting a Trump loyalist into a world the White House views with suspicion. But top intelligence officials fear that Mr. Feinberg is being groomed for a high position in one of the intelligence agencies.

Mr. Bannon and Mr. Kushner, according to current and former intelligence officials and Republican lawmakers, had at one point considered Mr. Feinberg for either director of national intelligence or chief of the Central Intelligence Agency’s clandestine service, a role that is normally reserved for career intelligence officers, not friends of the president. Mr. Feinberg’s only experience with national security matters is his firm’s stakes in a private security company and two gun makers.

On an array of issues — including the Iran nuclear deal, the utility of NATO, and how best to combat Islamist militancy — much of the information and analysis produced by American intelligence agencies contradicts the policy positions of the new administration.* The divide is starkest when it comes to Russia and President Vladimir V. Putin, whom Mr. Trump has repeatedly praised while dismissing American intelligence assessments that Moscow sought to promote his own candidacy."https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/15/us/politics/trump-intelligence-agencies-stephen-feinberg.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur&_r=0

*Because “much of the information and analysis produced by American intelligence agencies” is not driven by wishful thinking, Russian ambition, and Trump greed.

Ryan Cooper at The Week posted an analysis which dealt with some of the issues I've been curious about as the occupation of the Malheur refuge has dragged on; among them the self-mythology of the Bundy militia, and the insistence on raising cattle in the inhospitably arid West:

"Bundy's ideas are nonsense — but they're no more wrong than the entire creation myth of the American West. Though there have been Americans who could survive completely unaided in the West — men like Kit Carson and Jim Bridger — there were only a handful of them, and most were at least half-crazed. No society on Earth has ever functioned wholly on self-interested individualism — and that holds doubly true for the West. From the very start to the present day, Big Government has been the very bedrock of the settlement of the American frontier."

"...the final and starkest example of Western socialism: the delivery of water. What people tend to forget in the age of electricity and automobiles is that the West is mostly a huge desert, some of it harsh in the extreme. Private and even state-level efforts to develop water resources sufficient to support Western agriculture and mass settlement repeatedly failed all throughout the Gilded Age, leading to the passage of the Reclamation Act in 1902. It would end with the government building, owning, and operating key economic institutions throughout the West."

http://theweek.com/articles/598529/secret-history-cowboy-socialism

Cooper quotes Mark Reisner's Cadillac Desert:

"But even as the myth of the welcoming, bountiful West was shattered, the myth of the independent yeoman farmer remained intact. With huge dams built for him at public expense, and irrigation canals, and the water sold for a quarter of a cent per ton — a price which guaranteed that little of the public's investment would ever be paid back — the West's yeoman farmer became the embodiment of the welfare state, though he was the last to recognize it."

Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water by Marc Reisnerhttp://www.amazon.com/Marc-Reisner-Cadillac-Desert-Disappearing/dp/B00N4F0EZO/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1454170559&sr=8-2&keywords=Cadillac+Desert%3A+The+American+West+and+Its+Disappearing+Water%2C+Revised+Edition

"...The knight as a representative figure of nationalism and capitalism carries over to the cowboy, for he occupies a position remarkably similar to the knight, and his movement from historical figure to literary and cultural figure is similar as well. Indeed, as with the medieval knight, the historical cowboy bears little resemblance to the literary one. Thomas Gasque explores the historical cowboy, finding that he was often Latino or black, and if Anglo was of a lower economic class (not simply a gentrified albeit poor, displaced Southerner, for example) (12-15). Milton, too, states that “Conveniently forgotten were the Mexican vaquero, the Argentinean gaucho, the Venezuelan llanero, and the Chilean buaso, also Americans in the broadest geographical sense of the term but considered cultural foreigners, if considered at all” (3). These groups were not part of the mythologization process, which was limited to the chivalric, Anglo cowboy who was, ironically, “American.” Moreover, again similar to the knight, the cowboy was a mercenary of sorts whose primary task was to protect the property (both animal and land) of the rancher for whom he worked. He was not by definition “chivalric,” did not have a “code” other than to protect what he was paid to protect..."

"...While the cowboy as representative of capitalism may seem problematic, since he is often seen as a romanticized, nostalgic figure of the Old West, a place that is generally considered agrarian, at the turn of the century and during the early twentieth century, the cowboy actually furthered American nationalism and the capitalist ideology that attended it in two important and interconnected ways. First, the cowboy supported nationalism through his existence in the neutral space of the West, which allowed him to create nationalist sentiment, fueling the nationalist movement that brought North and South together. The country needed a neutral setting in which to create new memories so that what Gellner and Ernest Renan call a “collective amnesia” (Gellner, Culture 6) could take over, thereby healing to some extent the divisions that existed in the country. Renan contends that “a shared amnesia, a collective forgetfulness” is required for a nation to form (qtd. in Gellner, Culture 6). America needed an icon that would draw attention away from contention between the two parts of the country. Part of that amnesia is the creation of new memories once order is restored – mythological memories that attend to the ideology of the power structure (7). "

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http://littlegreenfootballs.com/page/319235_The_Bundy_Militia_and_The_Secr#rssSat, 30 Jan 2016 08:31:20 PSTCulturePete Seeger's FBI File Reveals How the Folk Legend First Became a Target of the FedsjaunteDirect link to article... [littlegreenfootballs.com]

Here we are in 2015 and conservative candidates are still suggesting targeting groups of people based on religion and ethnicity. Here's a reminder of the the (fairly recent) times when the nation's surveillance apparatus had an enemies list. Let's try not to 'take our country back' there.

D. Steinberg / AP

In the fall of 1942, Seeger, who was then 23 years old, wrote a letter of protest to the California chapter of the American Legion. It was to the point:

Dear Sirs -

I felt shocked, outraged, and disgusted to read that the California American Legion voted to 1) deport all Japanese after the war, citizen or not, 2) Bar all Japanese descendants from citizenship!!

We, who may have to give our lives in this great struggle—we're fighting precisely to free the world of such Hitlerism, such narrow jingoism.

If you deport Japanese, why not Germans, Italians, Rumanians, Hungarians, and Bulgarians?

If you bar from citizenship descendants of Japanese, why not descendants of English? After all, we once fought with them too.

America is great and strong as she is because we have so far been a haven to all oppressed.

I felt sick at heart to read of this matter.

Yours truly,

Pvt. Peter Seeger

I am writing also to the Los Angeles Times.

......................David Corn: "Seeger was 94 years old when he died. His wide-ranging impact on popular culture, music, and politics had survived all the efforts—behind closed doors and in the public—to brand him a subversive and an enemy of freedom. This was seven decades after he first became a target of government snoops merely because he was upset about a racist and unconstitutional idea and, as a private citizen, wrote a letter about it."

Read the rest at Mother Jones:http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/12/pete-seeger-fbi-file

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http://littlegreenfootballs.com/page/318915_Pete_Seegers_FBI_File_Reveals_#rssSun, 20 Dec 2015 17:15:27 PSTHistory"If someone forces you to bake a cake for a gay wedding, bake for them two."jaunteDirect link to article... [littlegreenfootballs.com]

"If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles." ~Matthew 5:41

If someone forces you to bake a cake for a gay wedding, bake for them two.

Christians, our Jesus said to not only follow the law, but to rise to a higher standard of love. Christians should be the FIRST people baking cakes -- for everyone who asks us. We should be known for our cake baking. People should be saying, "There go those crazy Christians again, baking cakes for everyone. They just won't quit!" Then, when we share the reason for our wild, all-inclusive love, people will want to hear it. "Let your light shine before others," said Jesus, "that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.

Christians, when we dig our heels in and insist on our right to discriminate, we are hurting people -- we are hurting so many people, so deeply. Behind the ACLU and the liberal media are real people, who have been hurt again and again in the name of Christ. Christians, you and I have hurt them. I know most of us have really good intentions, but we are making Jesus the last thing they want to hear about.

"...as immigration legal scholar Hiroshi Motomura has noted, the president has broad executive authority to shape the enforcement and implementation of immigration laws, including exercising prosecutorial discretion to defer deportations and streamline certain adjudications. In fact, history books reveal that President Obama's action follows a long line of presidents who relied on their executive branch authority to address immigration challenges."

Large-scale actions: In addition to Family Fairness, other large-scale actions include paroles of up to 600,000 Cubans in the 1960s and over 300,000 Southeast Asians in the 1970s, President Carter's suspension of deportations for over 250,000 visa-holders, and President Reagan's deferral of deportations for up to 200,000 Nicaraguans. Family-based actions: Other actions to protect families include the suspended deportations of families of visa-holders (Carter), parole of foreign-born orphans (Eisenhower, Obama), deferred action to widows of U.S. citizens and their children (Obama), and parole-in-place to families of military members (Obama). Actions while legislation was pending: Other actions taken while legislation was pending include parole of Cuban asylum seekers fleeing Castro (Nixon, Kennedy, Johnson), deferred action to battered immigrants whom the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) would protect (Clinton), parole of orphans (Eisenhower), and DACA (Obama).

As theories and distortions of the last moments of Michael Brown continue to multiply across conservative media, it's important to preserve the initial impressions of the people who were there.

- Dorian Johnson, Michael Brown's friend- Tiffany Mitchell, who was visiting her employee in a nearby apartment complex- Piaget Crenshaw, the woman who saw the incident while standing on her apartment balcony- Emmanuel Freeman, who saw the shooting outside his window and immediately tweeted about it- The man who spoke to Brown right before he left for the convenience store.who currently prefers to remain anonymous

Diana Ozemebhoya Eromosele has collected the stories of these five eyewitnesses, in a story at The Root:

As of press time, at least five eyewitnesses in the Michael Brown shooting case have come forward. All five witnesses had distinct vantage points: One person was with Brown during the incident, one woman was inside her vehicle, another woman observed the incident from her apartment balcony, one man was inside his apartment and another man was standing outside.

None of the eyewitnesses in this roundup--save for two--knew each other prior to the shooting. They could not have imagined that their lives would forever be intertwined as a result of what they allegedly witnessed that sunny afternoon in Ferguson, Mo.

When do women in Ireland get to say "no"? Today we find out that the answer is "never", not really - not if a man has other ideas and the state decides to enforce his use of a woman's body.http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2014/08/violation-after-violation-why-did-ireland-force-woman-hunger-strike-bear-her

And more recently:It doesn't matter if you're not part of the religion that's making the law.

Confusing Law, Deadly ResultA report into the death of Savita Halappanavar by Ireland's Health Service Executive, has charted a series of failures compounded by the fear that doctors could fall foul of criminal law if they saved the mother by aborting a miscarrying fetus:

Savita Halappanavar's husband, Praveen, said doctors determined that she was miscarrying within hours of her hospitalization for severe pain on Sunday, Oct. 21. He said that over the next three days doctors refused their requests for a termination of her fetus to combat her own surging pain and fading health.

"Savita was really in agony. She was very upset, but she accepted she was losing the baby," he told The Irish Times in a telephone interview from Belgaum, southwest India. "When the consultant came on the ward rounds on Monday morning, Savita asked: `If they could not save the baby, could they induce to end the pregnancy?' The consultant said: `As long as there is a fetal heartbeat, we can't do anything."'

"Again on Tuesday morning ... the consultant said it was the law, that this is a Catholic country. Savita said: "I am neither Irish nor Catholic," but they said there was nothing they could do," Praveen Halappanavar was quoted as saying.

One morning in early October, the sun bouncing off the glass sliding doors created a little fill light, and a good shooting blind to capture this birdseed gourmand.

NOM

MON

Toehold extension with surreal interior elements

Antennae up!

WHAT?

Threat Assessment

No threat perceived, continue NOM.

All shots from about 6 feet.LGF readers, feel free to use for personal Photoshops.

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http://littlegreenfootballs.com/page/302894_Squirrel!#rssSat, 02 Nov 2013 17:38:00 PDTArtStephen Fry: An Open Letter to David Cameron and the IOCjaunteDirect link to article... [littlegreenfootballs.com]

Truncated in this post; please read the whole thing.

He is making scapegoats of gay people, just as Hitler did Jews. He cannot be allowed to get away with it. I know whereof I speak. I have visited Russia, stood up to the political deputy who introduced the first of these laws, in his city of St Petersburg. I looked into the face of the man and, on camera, tried to reason with him, counter him, make him understand what he was doing. All I saw reflected back at me was what Hannah Arendt called, so memorably, "the banality of evil." A stupid man, but like so many tyrants, one with an instinct of how to exploit a disaffected people by finding scapegoats. Putin may not be quite as oafish and stupid as Deputy Milonov but his instincts are the same. He may claim that the "values" of Russia are not the "values" of the West, but this is absolutely in opposition to Peter the Great's philosophy, and against the hopes of millions of Russians, those not in the grip of that toxic mix of shaven headed thuggery and bigoted religion, those who are agonised by the rolling back of democracy and the formation of a new autocracy in the motherland that has suffered so much (and whose music, literature and drama, incidentally I love so passionately).

I am gay. I am a Jew. My mother lost over a dozen of her family to Hitler's anti-Semitism. Every time in Russia (and it is constantly) a gay teenager is forced into suicide, a lesbian "correctively" raped, gay men and women beaten to death by neo-Nazi thugs while the Russian police stand idly by, the world is diminished and I for one, weep anew at seeing history repeat itself.

........snip.........

I am begging you to resist the pressures of pragmatism, of money, of the oily cowardice of diplomats and to stand up resolutely and proudly for humanity the world over, as your movement is pledged to do. Wave your Olympic flag with pride as we gay men and women wave our Rainbow flag with pride. Be brave enough to live up to the oaths and protocols of your movement, which I remind you of verbatim below.

Rule 4 Cooperate with the competent public or private organisations and authorities in the endeavour to place sport at the service of humanity and thereby to promote peace

Rule 6: Act against any form of discrimination affecting the Olympic Movement

Rule 15 Encourage and support initiatives blending sport with culture and education

"The home invasion had been brazen, carried out in the middle of the day in a busy neighborhood in Pharr, and it had been sloppily executed. Later while surveying the damage, Perez's wife found a 9mm Luger under a pile of clothes.

Perez and his wife recounted the bizarre, frightening robbery and kidnapping to a sympathetic female officer at the police station. A security camera in Perez's home had recorded the entire incident, he told her. Two internal affairs officers from the Hidalgo County Sheriff's Department arrived and asked to see the video. As the video rolled and the armed men came into the camera's view, the color drained from the officers' faces. "I know who that is," one of them said. "That's Jonathan Treviño. The sheriff's son."

Wesley Allsbrook illustration for Texas Observer

"...The Panama Unit, the Guerras and the other law enforcement agents indicted, preyed on drug dealers trying to move large loads of marijuana, cocaine and other drugs past the immigration checkpoint--75 miles north of McAllen--where the drugs could be sold in Austin and other cities for exorbitant profits. The corrupt cops ripped off the drugs and the Guerras sold the drugs locally at near wholesale prices, then they split the profits.

One by one over the past six months, the indicted members in the scheme plead guilty avoiding a trial. They are still awaiting sentencing. The 65-year old Sheriff Treviño, a powerful elected official and an adviser on border security to the Department of Homeland Security, had escaped the scandal.

But Jorge Garza, a former sheriff's deputy, had different plans. His trial began a week ago in federal court in McAllen and will resume on Monday. The Panama Unit and police corruption in Hidalgo County is front-page news again. The trial testimony is being tweeted in real time on the front page of the McAllen Monitor's site. The trial is providing a fascinating yet disturbing look at the enticing effect so much drug money can have on law enforcement and how it leads to police corruption."

In March, the Observer reported that former deputies alleged corruption, cronyism and campaign-finance fraud at the sheriff's office. Treviño strongly denied the accusations. But multiple testimonies under oath over the past week have revealed damning evidence of campaign-finance fraud and corruption and of the sheriff's direct knowledge of his son's rogue drug task force, which terrorized Hidalgo County residents for years.

• These closures would contradict our various traditions’ teachings about reaching out to the weakest and poorest among us.

• Prohibiting abortion in this fashion poses a direct threat to the lives of Texas women. Such danger would be an abandonment of our faiths’ compassionate commitments to health and safety.

• This denial of liberty is an affront to religious teachings of human freedom and a violation of human rights.

• Imposing one, particular faith-based prohibition on the whole of society is a violation of our religious liberty, our freedom of conscience, and the principles of pluralism that are the foundation of our great nation.

"...It goes by different names — Burn Pit disease, Gulf War 2 Syndrome, Iraq and Afghanistan War Lung Injury, Post-Deployment Illness — but what veterans and contract workers who have it, and the small cadre of physician-scientists dedicated to understanding and treating it, agree on is that, like Gulf War Illness, its cause is wartime toxic exposure. An inhalational injury, it attacks the airways and lungs first, and then can wound most every other organ and system. “Burn pits were constant,” Paul Rieckhoff, director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, said, and most everyone was exposed to them “sometime during their deployment.” In 2009, the military admitted that as many as 360,000 veterans may have suffered traumatic brain injury, an, in turn, established programs for research and treatment. But about the systemic disease of our recent wars, the brass is admitting — and doing — almost nothing.

Thousands of sick veterans trace their illness to the burn pits, which the military as well as their contractors KBR and Halliburton used — instead of closed incinerators — to process garbage on US bases in Afghanistan and Iraq. Acres wide and hundreds of feet deep, the open furnaces burned day and night, morphing solid human waste, body parts, blood specimens, plastic water bottles, Styrofoam plates, Humvees, computers and more into black fumes and ash that covered the sky and ground."

Big Data is power.A fascinating look at the way computing technology is shaping our society.

From the Amazon.com review by Kevin Nguyen:

In Who Owns the Future?, Lanier is interested in how network technologies affect our culture, economy, and collective soul. Lanier is talking about pretty heady stuff--the monopolistic power of big tech companies (dubbed "Siren Servers"), the flattening of the middle class, the obscuring of humanity--but he has a gift for explaining sophisticated concepts with clarity. In fact, what separates Lanier from a lot of techno-futurists is his emphasis on the maintaining humanism and accessibility in technology. In the most ambitious part of the book, Lanier expresses what he believes to be the ideal version of the networked future--one that is built on two-way connections instead of one-way relationships, allowing content, media, and other innovations to be more easily attributed (including a system of micro-payments that lead back to its creator). Is the two-way networked vision of the internet proposed in Who Owns the Future quixotic? Even Lanier seems unsure, but his goal here is to establish a foundation for which we should strive. At one point, Lanier jokingly asks sci-fi author William Gibson to write something that doesn't depict technology as so menacing. Gibson replies, "Jaron, I tried. But it's coming out dark." Lanier is able to conjure a future that's much brighter, and hopefully in his imagination, we are moving closer to that.

Buy at the LGF Amazon store:http://www.amazon.com/Who-Owns-Future-Jaron-Lanier/dp/1451654960/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1368137984&sr=1-1&keywords=jaron+lanier

Jaron Lanier:

"The clamor for online attention only turns into money for a token minority of ordinary people, but there is another new, tiny class of people who always benefit. Those who keep the new ledgers,the giant computing services that model you, spy on you, and predict your actions, turn your life activities into the greatest fortunes in history. Those are concrete fortunes made of money.This book promotes a third alternative, which is that digital networking ought to promote a two-way transaction, in which you benefit, concretely, with real money, as I do. I want digital networking to cause more value from people to be on the books, rather than less. When we make our world more efficient through the use of digital networks, that should make our economy grow, not shrink."

The 2013 NRA Annual Meetings and Exhibits runs from Friday, May 3, through Sunday, May 5. More than 70,000 are expected to attend the event with more than 500 exhibitors represented. http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/houston/gallery/2013-NRA-Convention-in-Houston-61572.php

From the Houston Chronicle Editorial Board

Welcome to Houston, NRA members. Welcome also, we would hope, to an honest and thorough discussion this week about guns in our society and about the organization's goals and purposes.

We will be hearing a lot during the next few days about the NRA's views on the threat of a gun-owners' registry, assaults on the Second Amendment, the necessity of enforcing laws on the books instead of passing new ones, the futility of background checks and other gun-related issues. We thought that NRA members gathering in Houston from around the country might want to know a little more about guns and their host city.

They should know, for example, that Houstonians support the Second Amendment. We own guns and use them. We shoot ducks in the wetlands around El Campo and Eagle Lake. We hunt deer in the Texas Hill Country. And, yes, many of us keep a gun or two in a closet at home for safety, security and peace of mind.

Houstonians do not believe that their support for the Second Amendment precludes support for sensible rules and sane regulations designed to protect human life from a tool designed for the sole purpose of taking life.

Here in Houston, an annual survey by a respected Rice University sociologist found recently that 90 percent of the citizenry supports universal background checks for gun buyers. That number reflects nationwide findings, as the NRA is well aware. Close to 90 percent of Americans and 74 percent of NRA members support background checks.

(more at the link);http://www.chron.com/opinion/editorials/article/NRA-lands-in-Houston-4480793.php?cmpid=hpfsln

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http://littlegreenfootballs.com/page/296809_A_slideshow-_2013_NRA_Conventi#rssThu, 02 May 2013 18:39:45 PDTUS NewsWant to Blow Up a Killer Asteroid? Talk to This GuyjaunteDirect link to article... [littlegreenfootballs.com]

Illustration by Don Davis: http://www.donaldedavis.com/

If you believe the folks at NASA—and really, why shouldn't you?—it's only a matter of when, not if, we need someone like Dr. Bong Wie to save the human race from a civilization-destroying catastrophe.

Wie is the director of the Asteroid Deflection Research Center at Iowa State University, the only institution in the United States dedicated to the deflection of what NASA calls Near-Earth Objects (NEOs)—"asteroids" to the rest of us. He's been busy lately. On Friday, Americans woke up to reports and videos of the largest meteorite in more than a century crashing into Siberia. In the late afternoon, 600,000 people watched online as the DA14 asteroid passed just 17,000 miles from Earth. In response to all of this, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, announced he would hold a hearing "to develop contingencies" in the event of an imminent threat from outer space.

Scientists have been calling on the government to wake up to the NEO threat for decades, "but nothing happened," Wie says. "We are very lucky to have today's events."

Wie's plan for destroying an Earth-bound asteroid is simple: Stick a massive nuclear device into it and blast it to smithereens. Notwithstanding the 168 factual inaccuracies NASA engineers have reportedly found in Armageddon, Bruce Willis and Billy Bob Thornton got it essentially right. "Astronauts will not be required, so clearly this would be an unmanned robotic mission—but we will need a nuclear device," Wie says.

More at:http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/02/asteroid-nuclear-bomb-bong-wie-nasa

... Spherule beds deposited between 3.5 and 1.7 billion years ago have been found all over the world — but this time frame doesn't match up with existing models of unusually violent asteroid activity, specifically a span in our solar system's history known as the Late Heavy Bombardment (LHB). According to what's known as the Nice model, the LHB lasted from 4.1 to 3.8 billion years ago, when the irregular orbits of our cosmic neighborhood's outermost planets triggered a cannonade of asteroids and comets throughout the Solar System. What, then, was the source of the extraterrestrial assault responsible for the spherule beds that geologists see dating from 3.8-billion-years ago onward?

According to a new model, created by a research team led by planetary dynamicist William Bottke, these asteroids likely originated from a long-extinct extension of the asteroid belt located between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Computer simulations that incorporate this ancient extension not only reproduce a modern population of asteroids called the Hungarias, they also predict the occurrence of roughly 70 impact events, on the same scale or larger as the one that wiped out the dinosaurs, between 3.7 and 1.7 billion years ago. In brief: their results suggest that the LHB lasted, quite literally, billions of years longer than previously thought.

"...One underrated aspect of the new GOP veep nominee's political arsenal is a recurring persona of his that you might call Sad Paul Ryan. Sad Paul Ryan is less an ideological crusader and more like a wide-eyed boy who has come to Washington full of hope only to have his youthful dreams crushed by nastiness and name-calling. How Ryan's high-minded belief in the purity of political debate managed to survive his rise to power as a Washington staffer, I cannot say. So emotionally vulnerable is Sad Paul Ryan that even a statistical recitation of the effects of his plan will nearly reduce him to tears. He is capable of complaining that Obama will 'affix views to your opponent that they do not have so you can demonize them' — two sentences after accusing Obama of advocating 'socialized medicine.'

Yet Sad Paul Ryan appears so genuinely sad when he says such things — quite likely because he lacks the self-awareness that might complicate his earnest dejection — that he melts the cynicism of hardened observers. So Romney's advisers are now proclaiming, 'We are betting that a substantive campaign, conducted on the high ground, and focused primarily on jobs and the economy, will trump a campaign that is designed to appeal to our worst instincts,' and the candidate himself is delivering lines such as 'Mr. President, take your campaign out of the gutter and let's talk about issues.' (Talking About the Issues is Ryan's thing, unless talking about the Issues means discussing any specific element contained within his plan, in which case he would rather talk about bowhunting or catfish noodling.) Romney and Ryan inaugurated their new high-road campaign with the charge that Obama 'robbed' $700 billion from Medicare, declining to mention that their own plans keep the same cuts in place.

Now, adopting a persona of high-mindedness does not have a perfect track record in American politics. But it's not a hopeless gambit, either."

Wayne Self is a playwright and composer whose current project is a musical tribute to the 32 LGBT and allied victims of the 1973 arson fire at the Upstairs Lounge in New Orleans, LA. Considered by many to be the largest hate crime against LGBT people in U.S. history, the fire is sometimes seen as a lesson in the perils of silence.

Here and at the link are his thoughts on the recent Chick-fil-A controversy.

"It's definitely strange to have days-long Facebook debates flare up everywhere over a chicken sandwich. The anger, sarcasm, and hurt feelings on display seem strange or even laughable because most people have seen Chick-Fil-A as just a restaurant with a funny ad campaign. I'll get into some of the whys and wherefores of that later. But, for now, let's just say that, yes. It can seem ridiculous to get all worked up over fast-food chicken.

Let's also agree that this isn't about curtailing anyone's rights under First Amendment. The Constitution is a legal document. This is not a legal argument. No one is arguing that Chik-fil-A CEO Dan Cathy should be put in prison, or silenced, or censored by the government. This has nothing to do with government censorship or government abridgment of Freedom of Speech. So don't worry: the ability of this millionaire to legally spend his millions as he sees fit is not in jeopardy. You need not defend it. [...]

1. This isn't simply about marriage.

[...snip...] here's what you should know:

- In 29 states in America today, my partner of 18 years, Cody, or I could be fired for being gay. Period. No questions asked. One of those states is Louisiana, our home state. We live in self-imposed exile from beloved homeland, family, and friends, in part, because of this legal restriction on our ability to live our lives together.

- In 75 countries in the world, being gay is illegal. In many, the penalty is life in prison. These are countries we can't openly visit. In 9 countries, being gay is punishable by death. In many others, violence against gays is tacitly accepted by the authorities. These are countries where we would be killed. Killed.

- Two organizations that work very hard to maintain this status quo and roll back any protections that we may have are the Family Research Council and the Marriage & Family Foundation. For example, the Family Research council leadership has officially stated that same-gender-loving behavior should be criminalized in this country. They draw their pay, in part, from the donations of companies like Chick-Fil-A. Both groups have also done 'missionary' work abroad that served to strengthen and promote criminalization of same-sex relations.

- Chick-Fil-A has given roughly $5M to these organizations to support their work.

- Chick-Fil-A's money comes from the profits they make when you purchase their products.

Thirty three voter ID laws have been passed, some of which are still awaiting implementing legislation and clearance under the Voting Rights Act.(details at this link)Is the new voter fraud legislation justified?

Thomas B. Edsall, contributing writer for the New York Times:

On March 14, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett signed into law legislation requiring all voters to have a photo ID. Under this legislation, voters going to the polls without a photo ID, including indigent voters unable to pay necessary fees to get an ID, will be allowed to cast 'provisional' ballots. If you are one of these voters, you will then 'have six days to provide your photo ID and/or an affirmation to your county elections office to have your ballot count,' according to the Pennsylvania Department of State.

'I am signing this bill because it protects a sacred principle, one shared by every citizen of this nation. That principle is: one person, one vote,'' Corbett declared. 'It sets a simple and clear standard to protect the integrity of our elections.'

Republican State Representative Daryl Metcalfe, the bill's sponsor, said on the state House floor: 'I believe every single individual has a right to have their vote counted and if any individual vote is being canceled out by a fraudulently cast vote, that is one too many.'

A legal challenge to the law, currently before the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania, has, however, raised questions about the legitimacy of justifications for voter fraud legislation. On July 12, attorneys defending the law on behalf of the state and the Corbett administration stipulated the following:

The Parties are not aware of in-person voter fraud in Pennsylvania and do not have direct personal knowledge of in-person voter fraud elsewhere. Respondents will not offer any evidence in this action that in-person voter fraud has in fact occurred in Pennsylvania or elsewhere.

And that:

Respondents will not offer any evidence that in-person voter fraud is likely to occur in November 2012 in the absence of the Photo ID law.

In other words, the state cannot and will not produce any evidence of the kind of voter fraud the legislation has supposedly been crafted to prevent.

Neil Gaiman on making mistakes, the "impostor syndrome" and secret freelancer knowledge (he sounded confident and lied about his experience).

"People keep working because their work is good, they're easy to get along with, and they deliver the work on time. And you don't even need all three; two out of three is alright!"

http://vimeo.com/42372767

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http://littlegreenfootballs.com/page/276806_Neil_Gaiman_Addresses_the_Univ#rssSun, 20 May 2012 11:19:02 PDTArtReproductive Rights and the Long Hand of Slave BreedingjaunteDirect link to article... [littlegreenfootballs.com]

JoAnn Wypijewski:

"If there is an upside to the right's latest, seemingly loony and certainly grotesque multi-front assault on women, it is the clarion it sounds to humanists to take the high ground and ditch the anodyne talk of 'a woman's right to choose' for the weightier, fundamental assertion of 'a woman's right to be.'

That requires that we look to history and the Constitution. I found myself doing that a few weeks back, sitting in the DC living room of Pamela Bridgewater, talking about slavery as the TV news followed the debate over whether the State of Virginia should force a woman to spread her legs and endure a plastic wand shoved into her vagina.....snip....

"....Since that conversation in Pamela's living room, the anti-woman spring offensive has come on in full. Virginia lawmakers ended up imposing a standard ultrasound mandate rather than the 'transvaginal' version, one of at least ninety-two new regulations or restrictions that states have imposed on abortion since 2011, and one of at least 155 introduced in state legislatures since the start of the year. Rush Limbaugh revealed himself to be astoundingly ignorant of female sexuality. Rick Santorum demonstrated many times over that, for him, no idea in 'the sexual realm' is too outlandish. They and their anti-woman allies have lobbed so many bombs it's easy to get distracted, to assume a posture of defensive, and sometimes politically dicey, defense: but no federal money pays for abortion; women who delay child-bearing are more productive; the Pill eases painful periods; most of what Planned Parenthood does has nothing to do with abortion; contraceptives help against rheumatoid arthritis; Mrs. Santorum might have died under the fetal personhood platforms her husband touts; Sandra Fluke is not a slut…

What of it if she were? By any other name, ain't she a woman? A human being? The descendants of slave masters have no more right to control her sexuality and reproductive organs, to deny her self-determination, than did their predecessors. Mother or slut, prostitute or daughter, law student or lazybones who just wants to have sex all day, she is heir in her person to a promise of universal freedom, one that does not make such distinctions but that recognizes an individual's right to her life, her labor, her body and self-possession all as one. Forget trying to shut up a gasbag on the radio; there is a basic constitutional liberty to uphold."